Burning a dvd movie is a lot more difficult than a ps2 dvdr.
I finally make perfect dvd movie backups but the process of ripping out the subtitles, then taking languages out etc is a very long winded one. Check out tutorials on the net for burning dvd movies. There are loads out there.
Now as for the original question,
I used nero to burn ps2 dvdrs for close to a year now, and it's worked fine for me everytime regardless of if i used dvd to dvd or burned an image first.
I've recently moved to recordnow max which i'm pretty impressed with. They both do the job but for some reason recordnow max has a more professional feel to it with a few nice options to play with
As i've never used your dvd burner I can't comment on which would be the best but as hull_chipper said. what works for one doesn't work for all.
Try either program and see which works best for you. There is a tutorial by (i think it's) psx_paul at the top of this forum which covers everything for recordnow max.
Please record back and let us know which you find best for your burner. That way we can possibly advise people in the future.
Also in response to why it's better to burn an image,
ok, here we go!
Well it's very much advised to have your reader and your writer on different IDE channels.
Now consider that if you have your reader on ide 1 slave, and your writer on secondary master. If you do cd to cd (which i have done many a time) you will usually get a constant stream of data between the two.
However, windows has a tendancy (especially xp) to think the machine is idle and to go away and start doing random things (usually for efficiency) and you're reader is on the same IDE. So it interrupts the process.
Or the really simple reason is also because if you have a dirty dvd original and do dvd to dvd then you lose a dvdr!
Hope this helps,
Jay
Cheers
Jay